For social software, user culture is as important as product features
Earlier this week I did a fascinating exercise. I was paired with a stranger and we were each asked to introduce ourselves in a two minute monologue. The second person to speak was asked if their introduction paralleled that of the first person. Did you feel compelled to cover areas that the other person did (e.g. family, work history, where you went to school, hobbies etc), and at similar length? And the answer, of course, was yes.
How strange, that this stranger had such an impact on how you described yourself, what you chose to talk about, and what you chose not to talk about.
That is how quickly culture can be created. Culture is “the way we do things around here”. And it forms almost instantly, by example.
The same is true for any social software, from Snapchat to Instagram to Facebook. By watching what behavior they see, users learn how to use the product.
When this works well, you get fantastic, coherent experiences and terrific content. Pinterest, Instagram, Whisper are all examples. With Pinterest, early users saw aspirational clothing, furniture, accessories pinned, and so that is what they pinned too. With Instragram they saw beautiful photos and so that is what they posted. With Whisper they saw raw, honest confessionals and that is what they shared also.
When this works badly, you get ChatRoulette, Youtube comments, and Secret. Seeing others exposing themselves drives mean-time-to-penis to zero. Reading racist, hateful, semi-literate commentary makes it OK to respond with more flames and trolling. Scrolling through anonymous character assassination or bullying give users leave to do the same.
Social software, like all software, can be used for good or for ill. Many product folks spend a lot of time sweating the details of features and functionality. Some don’t spend enough time thinking about how a user’s first experience models the subsequent behavior that they will adopt. (I’m looking at you, Tay!).
Mindfully demonstrating the desired user culture when a new social product launches is an equally important tool that deserves the same level of attention. For Instagram that meant using the Discovery tab to demonstrate amazing photos. For Medium it meant hiring professional writers to set the quality (and length) expectations. For Whisper it meant obsessive, human-intensive moderation early on, supplemented with machine learning over time. In each case, curation and moderation from the beginning was crucial to setting user culture from the beginning.
Thanks to my partners Alex Taussig and Aaron Batalion for reviewing drafts of this post and suggesting edits before publication.
